It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Not in the joy and tinsel and presents kind of way. More in the manufactured-panic-about-a-war-on-Christmas kind of way. Are you familiar with this annual ritual? Some kindergarten or other decides not to hold a nativity play, or to replace its Christmas party with some generic “end-of-year” fare and then it’s on: political correctness has gone mad, and non-Christian minorities – namely Muslims – are holding good, decent, Christmas-loving Australians to ransom. Our culture is being sacrificed as an offering to a minority that doesn’t know its place.

All this came rushing back to me this week as the Abbott government announced it was dropping its proposed amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act. The announcement wasn’t altogether surprising, but the context for it was. Suddenly section 18C would be left alone as a figleaf for Muslims; a kind of transfer fee for their recruitment to “Team Australia”. Consider how that looks if you believe – as presumably the government still does – this section is an egregious attack on free speech. Apparently we must continue to live under its yoke to appease Muslims in the hope that they’ll help us fight terrorism. We’re being held to ransom again. Muslims are the Grinch who stole freedom.

Suddenly section 18C would be left alone as a figleaf for Muslims; a kind of transfer fee for their recruitment to “Team Australia”.

The truth, of course, is that Muslims are largely peripheral to both issues. I don’t think I’ve met a single Muslim – or indeed a member of any other religious minority – who could care less about public Christmassy-ness. And whilst I have met Muslims who were unimpressed by the government’s plans for the Racial Discrimination Act, it seems an unusual red line for them to draw given that Muslims aren’t even protected by it. The law doesn’t regard Muslims as a racial group. So, whatever it is section 18C prevents you from saying about Aborigines or Asians or Jews, you can go right ahead and say it about Muslims. That’s exactly why Victoria introduced laws specifically targeting religious vilification: because the Racial Discrimination Act has nothing to say about it.

So, it’s already started on talkback radio. But with any luck it won’t stick because the Abbott government’s political calculations here are so transparent. The fight against 18C was widely unpopular and politically costly. Thus did the government become horribly entangled, desperately needing a way to extricate itself. For a time it sought to do this by politely ignoring the issue, burying it beneath a process of reviewing public submissions and considering revisions.

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But this wasn’t really a solution. Public impressions had been well set, and the government was now associated with the proposal, whether or not it was actively pursuing it. It needed somehow to dissociate itself without being seen simply to have dumped its policy. So now it is dumped as a counter-terrorism strategy. It’s an audacious move that relies on the idea that once any proposal is presented as a security measure, it is considerably more difficult to oppose. In truth, it’s a bit too audacious, even if it looked neat enough on paper.

The real trouble is that it takes the Abbott government to all sorts of places I very much doubt it wants to go. If 18C has been preserved in the interests of “national unity”, is the government admitting that its promise to amend it was divisive? If so, what does it think of the kind of rhetoric that violates 18C? Does that compromise national unity, too? Surely it is worse to engage in racial discrimination yourself than merely to propose legalising it out of a commitment to liberal freedoms. Surely it is more divisive to be a bigot than to stand for someone’s right to bigoted expression. Does that mean that those who breach the Racial Discrimination Act are undermining Team Australia?

To draw a specific connection between 18C and counter-terrorism requires a long bow. But the mere attempt to do so has intriguing philosophical consequences. By presenting divisive politics as a security concern, the government is implicitly accepting the social dimensions of terrorism. It suggests that terrorism gathers around feelings of alienation and social exclusion; that intelligence flows best from communities that feel valued and included rather than surveilled, suspected and interrogated. This, as it happens, accords with the best research we have on the psychology of radicalisation and effective counter-terrorism policing. It accords far less well, however, with the way that governments tend to talk about terrorism.

Is the Abbott government a devotee of this approach? If so, does it intend to reinstate the Countering Violent Extremism program – and in particular its grants for community programs aimed at “Building Community Resilience” – that it let lapse in June? Is it reconsidering the regime of preventative detention and control orders? You know, the ones that were so abused in the Mohammed Haneef case, and which clearly spook many Muslims who fear their arbitrary use? The ones that the government’s own legislative monitor recommended be abolished because they are “not effective, not appropriate and not necessary”?

Or do the social dimensions of terrorism somehow begin and end with the Racial Discrimination Act? Certainly seems an odd place to end. But then, unless you focus on the political manoeuvring, it’s an odder place to start.

Waleed Aly is a Fairfax Media columnist. He hosts Drive on ABC Radio National and is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.

284 comments so far

Another excellent essay Waleed, and so well articulated. You are emerging as one of the best journalist-writers in Australia, it is a pity there are not more like you around. I think many of us are thinking just as you outline: with the jettison of 18c., followed by something far more pernicious and potentially racist or completely prejudiced to Muslims, and in fact all Australians. I agree also that it will only encourage the very thing that they seek to control. This government seems only to know punishment and belligerence. My feeling is that they will not get away with it, they are amateurs when it comes to these absurd policies, they are not clear about what they have cobbled together and have no ability to sell such Draconian policies. I think many Australians now see through their secret agendas and spin. For the record, I'm an Australian descendant from the First Fleet, and not a Muslim. I'm strongly patriotic for my country, but 'Team Australia' has nothing to do with country I know and love.

Commenter

g4george

Date and time

August 07, 2014, 11:41PM

Well said. This government is so ridiculous because it operates in an ethical vacuum.

Commenter

Gomez

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 5:57AM

Gomez says "Well said. This government is so ridiculous because it operates in an ethical vacuum."Indeed, Gomez. There's a lot of muslim people who are concerned about this government's attitude to muslims and are quick to point this out. Not so many appear to be quite as vocal about the ethical vacuum of the Islamic Caliphate of Iraq and al Sham and its attitude to the evil "Nasrani" and indeed other muslims.

Commenter

JohnB

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 6:36AM

The hilarious thing - uproariously funny - is that the bigots now regard Abbott as a turncoat, a traitor to their rights to be bigoted.

Of course it was inept, and bungled, and fed the racists - but to claim that the Govt was surprised at the strength of opposition puts this Govt in the padded cell. I mean, who could not have guess, in a country where nearly 50% trace their origins to non-white, non-Christian races, that ONLY the extreme bigots would be attracted by this change - and for all their noise, they are relatively few in number.

We see the same proportions here in the comments pages - the same commentors, week after week, demanding the right to call refugees "illegal" - the same people who demand that we import "skilled" labour to undermine wage growth, the same people who cry horror when the 457 is discovered to be largely an employer-driven rort, with its own set of people-smugglers who falsify documents.

These bigots swing from feverish insistence on the right to employ who they want, and the same day condemn the rorts that emerge from their noisy insistence of free market logic.

These Libertarians and neocons spend their lives twisting from one position to the next, and Abbott spends his time chasing them. Now the IPA (until recently a fervent admirer of Abbott) threatens to run an attack advertising campaign ... for what purpose, we ask? To further weaken Abbott?

I would certainly welcome their attack campaign. Abbott must have so few friends now, that a LNP BBQ would have neighborhood dogs as the main attendees. Which, I suppose, better for those of us who prefer the company of dogs than bigots.

Commenter

Axis

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 6:40AM

exactly what they said in the UK, now look at them

Commenter

JJ

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 6:50AM

Well said G4G. An excellent article by Waleed and a well written comment.

Commenter

Hunter Whine

Location

Hunter Valley

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 7:01AM

G'day, g4george - thank you.WA, as always - a good read; thought provoking and enjoyable. Inevitably, thankfully, there will be a range of opinions on this mater. I am disappointed that Abbott will not pursue his attempts to abolish section 18C - a law that punishes those who say things that may be offensive or insulting to people. In my opinion, although the statements can be particularly awful, they should not be unlawful.I think Abbott offers a pusillanimous justification for not continuing – and suspect he has simply decided to pick the Parliamentary battles where there is a chance of success; this sure ain’t one of them.I doubt he did this in response to strong views in the broader community – I suspect many people have little knowledge (or interest) regarding section 18C. Rather, it is more likely to do with the concern and determination to fight this by certain groups – who see themselves as being vulnerable if changes to 18C go ahead. You may not necessarily like the fact that ‘lobby groups’ can do this, but it is part of the way democracy works. Hallelujah. Having said that, even if a majority of people did oppose the changes – it is not necessarily a sufficient reason to leave 18C as it is; after all, the intention of the right to (so called) ‘free speech’ is to allow unpopular comments to be expressed. In the spirit of encouraging a diversity of views, we should celebrate different opinions and debate on this topic – those with whom we disagree are not necessarily wrong; who amongst us is the keeper of the immutable truth?

Commenter

Howe Synnott

Location

Sydney

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 7:18AM

What this country needs is more racist rants by some bogan yobbo toward some unsuspecting non Anglo on public transport uploaded on YouTube. They're doing it for team austraya

Commenter

Tadd

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 7:20AM

Actually the author might note that muslims aren't a racial a group they're actually a religious group, the fact that religionists want to use Section 18C to escape critiques of their various practices and beliefs is in my opinion a good reason why Australia can do without it.

Commenter

SteveH.

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 7:38AM

@JohnB - Muslims frequently speak out about the bad behaviour of muslims in other countries, it's just that the media doesn't report on it. People calling for moderation and for people to behave themselves... it doesn't make for eyeball-catching headlines.